4 pm on a rainy afternoon

After having lunch in the cafeteria with a fellow student I went to the library at about 1 pm yesterday, planning to read all afternoon until I left for a lecture at 6 pm. I planned on taking a break at about 4, to get a snack so that I wouldn't be too hungry before the lecture. The library I use is part of the German department, which is in a huge old yellow-brick building that used to be a hospital. The back of the building is home to "Theater in the OP", based in the old operating theater, and probably not too surprisingly, performs very experimental theater. The library takes up three floors of the western-most wing, and I was spending the afternoon reading in the basement in the room for literature from the second half of the twentieth century. The rooms in the library are really marked off like classrooms, with doors that stay closed unless you're entering or leaving them - a big change from the vanderbilt library where the stacks on any given floor are open all the way through, front to back and side to side.

There are many other departments housed on the grounds of the old hospital, including the physical therapy training center where my roommate went to class. Because there are so many people there so close together, there are also multiple opportunities to get something to eat. There's a cafeteria (or Mensa) - not the one that I had lunch in, though. Cafeterias here are different, since there isn't a residential campus. They typically only serve lunch, and there are smaller ones anywhere there is a university presence, which in this case, is almost all over the city. The Mensa Italia is right behind one building I have two classes in, another close to the German department, another across the square from where the chorus rehearses, another (although supposedly the worst) at the new university hospital, not to mention the biggest one on the main campus. What's nice about the mensa that is close to the german department is that it has a little cafe beside it, where you can get a cup of coffee or tea, a piece of cake, or a small sandwich. That's where I headed a little after 4 yesterday afternoon. It was a balmy 8 degrees (46 farenheit) and was raining, just like it had been all day. I got to the door of the cafe just in time to see that it had closed for the afternoon. But, I thought, no big deal, there is a kiosk on the other side of the hospital grounds, surely I can go there - they wouldn't close at the same time as the cafe, precisely for the business people like me would give them right now. So I walked back from where I came through the gate on the other side only to find that the kiosk was closed, too. Of course, since most people get their food either at the mensa, the cafe, or the kiosk, there isn't a lot of incentive for another business to set up shop anywhere close by. I remembered that down the street and around the corner there was a bakery, and walked under the dripping lilacs and pine trees up to the corner bakery - which was doing huge business, since it was the only place that was open!

I walked in and immediately lost anything like a place in line because I wanted to see what was for sale in the display case before ordering, and walked all along the front - unknowingly standing in the "I've ordered and I'm waiting for my food" spot, so that no one behind the counter asked what I'd like to have. Getting back in line, I ordered a tea and a "Bobbes" - new to me, a pastry that's basically sugar cookie dough rolled around raisins and served in big slices. It was crowded, and although there were places to sit, there weren't enough for everyone to have their own table. I took a seat beside an older woman at a table where I could still watch the people walking by (I could also see the lighted sign of the pharmacy, which is how I knew it was 8 degrees celcius, on april the 29th, and in regular intervals, how many more minutes past four it was). It's been my experience that sharing a table in public with someone you don't know is no big deal here, you just ask if the seat is taken, and if it's not, you can sit there. You might wish the person you're sitting with "guten Appetit", and when you or they leave, say "Tschüss", but aside from that, people seem to be pretty ok with there being no conversation.

I could tell that this wouldn't be the case with my companion in the bakery, but there really was no other place to sit. My thoughts were still buried in the books I had left with a note in the library to please not reshelve, and wasn't really interested in talking, but after a polite "guten Appetit", I was asked whether my pastry tasted good. I admitted it was very good, and even seemed to have a bit of marzipan in it. Hers did, too, I was told, and that it is so nice to drink tea on a day like this. Moments like this are some of the harder ones for me being new in a city. On the one hand, I was mentally somewhere else, specifically, why Ruth Klüger is convinced that women read differently than men, on the other hand, a part of me resonated with this woman's desire just to have someone to talk to. Maybe she has a house full of family waiting for her at home, but I had the sense that this trip to the bakery was an escape into a world with people in it. She was delighted by the very tall man that was also eating in the bakery, and wondered aloud at what would be difficult about being a Giant. As another person without a lot of people here to talk to, I struggle with these conversations. Sometimes, I just want someone to talk to, too. What would happen if this woman and I met for tea every Wednesday afternoon?

I ended up finishing my snack quickly and heading back for the library - I wanted to read another chapter before 6. But I've kept thinking about it - one of the things I like about Germany is how much more time is spent in a public space. I feel safer walking the streets at night in Germany just because so many other people are also out and about. At the same time, just seeing other people isn't the same as connecting with them, and encounters like this, where I tend to brush off the possibility of really acknowledging someone else, make me wonder just how public these spaces are.